Color Portrait and making paint

 Making your own paint from pigment and binder:

Please see my NOv. 5, 2020 post on creating your own watercolor paints.

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/8812132386157895665/2181838827245295013

instructions from Jackson's 

https://www.jacksonsart.com/blog/2020/09/25/making-handmade-watercolours-with-jacksons-artist-pigments/#:~:text=With%20a%20glass%20muller%2C%20I,was%20happy%20with%20the%20result.

Painting a loose portrait

I am attempting to show two ways of painting a portrait, one loose and one more my normal style.

For the loose one, I am using a photo of my youngest grandson, Owen, who is 2 1/2. This can be tricky because it is SOOO easy to age a child so they look older.

Here is the color photo

Photo turned into 3 values on notanizer

Photo turned to 4 values on NOtanizer

I made my drawing using both of these because I wanted the hair to show up better, as it does in the 2nd photo of the Notanizer.

When I was happy with the drawing, I wet the paper (except where I wanted pure whites), and began putting color into the background. This is a very blond little boy, so I used some blues and greens in the background. The face has some blues in the shadow areas, yellows on the sunlit side. I get some back runs, but they are not in important parts, so I just leave them. I want this to look like he is just stepping out from the background.

When it was dry, I began using actual skin tones, starting with the shadow areas.I'm painting in some shadow areas of the hair. The tip of the nose gets some warm red, but it fades, as you can see. Don't like the chin, but I will fix this later. My goal isl to touch it as little as possible. 

For the color painting, I am again using the cowboy hat photo of daughter #2. This time I will need to refer to the color photo also to get warms and cools and skin tones. I am also going to use hot press paper, which will be a little harder for me, since I don't use it much.

The beginning step is to find a skin tone mix that you like. Make plenty of a paint mix. Also prepare a cool and a warm to add when you need to. I covered the entire face, wet into wet, with a pale skin tone. While wet, I put the cooler magenta on the right side of the nose, on the neck, under the chin. I put a warmer color on the cheek bones and left side of the nose. This has to dry.

Here are some results from one-color portraits so far.

I am pretty impressed!!!